World Poetry Day Congratulations!

To all poets, performers and poetry lovers! This is our final posting in a week full of poetry and performance recalling the very basis of all performative poetry: With Kurt Schwitters´ Ursonate (primordial sonata or sonata in primordial sounds), Jaap Blonk and Golan Levin performing Ursonography and Anat Picks Part 1 tongueTrum (N’ur so nata) we want to celebrate poetic performances and their further development, their international impact and their dada potential.

Performativity is a central characteristic of sound poetry: Poetry and sound become one. Written notices are only of supportive function and help to realize the poems as sounds. Voice and body of the performers are part of the event that can be a bodily experience for both performers and audience. Sound poets are known for their extreme dedication. They scream and whisper fighting or praising the word and its acclaimed meaning.

We asked sound poetry-performers Pierre Guéry, Jaap Blonk and Eirikur Örn Norddahl about their personal artistic view on performance and their experiences with it. And once more we find out, that the term performance has a wide range that differs a lot in both its theoretical understanding and its – performance!

What is a performance – what is not performative?

Pierre Guéry: Concerning poetry, a performance is not a simple reading. Above all it is the whole poet’s body into space creating an energetic contact with the audience. With a text of course, but with a type of text that can involve the entire being of the poet: what he means with words, for sure, but also what his body suggests, what his voice impacts. For a performance the poet cannot remain into distance with his creation – whether he’s alone or with other artists on stage. Basically, he’s got to recall the specific pulse that was inside him while writing and give it back to the audience in its nudity. He’s got to have a strong will for transmitting and sharing this pulse sincerely, not being afraid by his fragility or violence. The audience knows very well whether this happens or not, and there is no possible cheating.

What is not performative: a simple reading with a great musician or a nice video! This is not enough to call it performance, though it is very current. Poetry performance (especially what is called sound poetry), as well, is not just yelling words like a mad person! A poetic performance is not just melting different arts to give the poem a beautiful suit.

Jaap Blonk: For myself it is 100% clear if I am performing or not. It’s a matter of turning a switch from 0 to 1 and back.

In the case of most poets I have seen on stage, supposedly performing, it wasn’t so clear if they were actually doing a performance or not.

Eirikur Örn Norddahl: My idea of performance is very much connected to the idea of “live” – a recording of a performance is closer to being text, which is then only performative at the moment of writing.

How important is loudness to your work?

Pierre Guéry: Loudness is just a help and can be fun. I use it quite often and create some effects that amplify what my voice wants to give. It is only a tool in my work and I never base on it because I want to keep a certain nudity. I do not want to count on technology to find something that I don’t possess myself.

Jaap Blonk: I assume by loudness you mean volume (dynamics in musical terms). This is of eminent importance for my work. I give it the utmost care in all gradations.

Eirikur Örn Norddahl: There needs to be a framed spectrum – the spectrum doesn’t have be great, but there needs to be an upper and lower border within which the artwork functions, for there to also be a breaking point, a point where the border is pierced and/or crumbles. It can never be so loud that you cannot – through effort – still make it a little bit louder if needed. I have also often thought of the connection between loudness and power as being interesting, not only because we often see the correlation – whether it be shouting police dogs or bombs – but because loudness is also a mask for the powerless, just as silence is a mask for the powerful.

What must the audience provide?

Pierre Guéry: There is no « must »! The audience provides or not, and it provides what it provides if the poet himself provides something strong – otherwise no feedback!

Jaap Blonk: There’s nothing the audience ‘must’ provide. However, I very much appreciate it if their interest goes deeper than just attending a performance, and also stretches toward the permanent objects of art, such as books and recordings.

Eirikur Örn Norddahl: Presence. Humanity.

What was the greatest thing that happened to you onstage?

Pierre Guéry: So many great things happen all the time! The greatest thing is probably, most often, what is unexpectable – when the feedback is a total surprise (and consequently gives an unknown and new meaning to the piece that is performed).

Also when work involves another artist and when both poet and artist touch a state of grace by « making love to eachother » onstage – I mean find their own soul in the other one’s soul.

Jaap Blonk: Crossing what I had so far considered ‘the border of madness’, and finding out that the audience was not embarrassed at all, but touched by a genuine artistic utterance.

Eirikur Örn Norddahl: I don’t know if it can be considered great, but I once for a moment thought I had killed the great Jacques Roubaud with my poetry. He was sitting at the front at a show at the Days of poetry and wine in Ptuj, Slovenia, on a shaky stump of wood. When I started my show – which consisted of all sorts of weird noises and conceptually and politically motivated wisecracks – he started laughing. And he just kept laughing. When I broke into a ten minute shoutfest consisting of 17th century Icelandic zaum-nonsense he laughed so hard that he fell of his tree stump, stumbling on to the sidewalk. He was 80 at the time and half the festival panicked and got up to see if he was OK, and I still had eight minutes left of my shoutfest, looking out the corner of my eye feeling very insecure as to whether or not I had accidentally murdered one of my idols and whether or not that meant I should stop. (He was fine; and I didn’t stop).

I once had a whole platoon of finnish teen girls and horse enthusiasts chant along with one of my poems with great energy, I have had children go mad with joy, running around glowing – but I’ve also had people boo me, throw stuff at me, I have had people cry, shout, and one person even had an epileptic fit when I was on stage. And then I hadn’t even started reading yet.

Spoken Word, Rap, and Slam Poetry: Those could be first things that come to mind when we think about poetry and performance. Voices, words and poems are loud and powerful when they fight for justice and against repression. But the words always also stand and fight for themselves, for the space they need, their language and the connections they achieve. In TV-Shows and concert halls performers like Ursula Rucker, Saul Williams, L-ness and others give rise to the power with which a poem constitutes and forms a reality.

The selected videos demonstrate how the established surroundings of poems and their categories can be challenged to find new ways of reaching an audience. TJDema postulates a word in action, SharrifSimmons meets other artists in the streets of a foreign country, MaudVanhauwaert performs her poem in a quotidian surrounding.

A poem is a poem – what else could it be? The German poet Gerhard Falkner is eager to try out new ways of presenting his work. Collaborations with other artists, filmmakers, graphic and sound designers are the results of his curiosity towards new shapes and dimensions of poetry.

In an interview with lyrikline he describes the two steps of his artistic process. During the creation of a poem the dimension of sound is already included: “Denken ist hören” – “thinking is listening” and cannot be separated from writing or reading. But the access to poetry differs: Reading and listening are two possibilities with different advantages. The second step of the process comes after the production when the “original” poem is already concluded. In collaborations Falkner describes himself as a tree that is being put in scene by a fence or a poster: It is still the tree but it is being looked at differently. His openness towards working together with other artists anticipates the recognition of different energies. Text, sound and action must profit from the coincident presentation. The first performance of Das Wort by Gerhard Falkner and Sound Designer Johannes Malfatti at the LiteraturwerkstattBerlin demonstrates the synergy of improvisation and montage of text and sound.

Poets that read their own poetry seem rather normal to us – but what exactly is happening in the moment of such a presentation? When we asked German poets Carolin Callies about her experiences the answer was quite surprising: Whenever she finishes a poem it develops a certain independence and distance to its own creator. Accessing the poem in a state of completion becomes a theatric act that can also include a different set of voices or attitudes.

On the other hand listening to a poet often develops closeness between the performer and the audience. Besides the individual differences in tone and voice the phonetic and rhythmic aspects of poetry suddenly appear. Rhymes, assonances and alliterations unfold their effects, verses and structures become audible compositions. Recordings can tell us about all kinds of aspects: How does the poet approach her reading? What atmosphere and intensity does she create? Where does she place the breaks, which lines are being stressed? Does she follow the original text or is she being drawn into the process?

lyrikline allows us to share this moment with hundreds of poets and listen to our favorite poems again and again.

But what does it mean when an author reads her own poems? And what about the relations between poem, author and audience? The following sketches two positions demonstrating the differences of an understanding of poetry.

A common point of view can be summarized by the following statements:

>> The written poem is a completed art work and therefore is unchangeable. >>Every presentation of the poet is an interpretation that refers to its original. >>The author holds a special intention that she can work out with the means of her presentation. >>The meaning of poem can be understood best, when the author presents it, because she will interpret it correctly.

A performative approach however considers the process of the presentation already as an own artistic event.

>>A poem is not a written text but its performance. Its realization happens in the process of writing and reading. >>The reading itself with all its coincidences and transformations is to be taken seriously. Time and space are part of the aesthetical experience. >>This means that the signification of a poem is not firm but depends on the context. Enactments replace interpretations. The reference to an original is not necessary. An enactment imposes its own standards. >>It is not required that the audience tries to understand the intention of the author. Its own aesthetical experience is basis of their own involvement.

Whether it is the listening to a live reading or to a recorded playlist on lyrikline: The voice of the author makes a difference. But how we perceive the result depends on our understanding of poetry that apart from the given examples can be individually cultivated.

Anglo-American poet Wystan Hugh Auden (February 21, 1907 – September 29, 1973) is regarded by many critics as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. He published about four hundred poems, including several really long poems, and more than four hundred essays and reviews about literature, history, politics, and many other subjects. His work is amongst others noted for its variety in tone, form and content.
For example, in this clip we see Auden reading a Doggerel [Knittelvers]. ‘Doggerel by a Senior Citizen‘ gives us the perspective of an old and curmudgeonly man, listing a dozen ways in which the world was worse in the 1960s than when he was growing up.

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Here you will find the original text of ‘Doggerel by a Senior Citizen‘.

W.H. Auden was born in England, married Erika Mann later to provide her with a British passport, moved to the United States in 1939, where in 1946 he became an American citizen. From 1948 on, Auden began to spend the summers in Europe, first in Ischia, Italy, where he rented a house, then in Kirchstetten, Austria, where he bought a farmhouse in 1958.
In 1973, he died of a heart attack in a hotel room in Vienna and was buried in Kirchstetten, where he wanted to be buried, and to have a typical Austrian funeral.

Don’t miss this wonderful document of his 60th birthday celebration in Kirchstetten, Austria 1967, preserving the moment when the mayor and some local kids deliver their birthday wishes in rhymes.

Russian poet and essayist Joseph Brodsky (May 24, 1940 – January 28, 1996) was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972, after 10 years of denunciation, imprisonment, hospitalization into a mental institution and years of not being allowed to publish nor to travel.
After he was put on a plane to Vienna in June 1972, he settled in America and never returned to Russia. In 1987, the American citizen Brodsky was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, receiving the Prize for Russian-language poetry.

Due to the fact that Brodsky wrote in Russian and English throughout his career, and was also self-translating his work occasionally, we thought it would be a good idea to come up with two clips today:

In Catholicism, All Souls’ Day is the day to commemorate the dead souls, and annually occurs on November 2. In today’s clip we see Paul Celan (November 23, 1920 – April 20, 1970), born into a German-speaking Jewish family in Cernăuți*, reading his poem Allerseelen (All Souls) from the poetry book Sprachgitter (1959).

Celan’s texts can appear hermetically sealed. Not only is a contextualising often difficult in his work, also linguistic, historical, and religious modes interpenetrate and counteract each other.
In Allerseelen, some say, Celan speaks about the act of poetic creation (writing) and commemorates so to speak the creations themselves, his poems, which he has seen as living souls of its own kind.